


green room pale

by ivanattempts



Category: The Dolls of New Albion: A Steampunk Opera - Shapera, The New Albion Radio Hour: A Dieselpunk Opera - Shapera
Genre: please go listen to the albion albums they're so so good and i am so in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:59:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6350815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanattempts/pseuds/ivanattempts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>We take you now to a small, morbid room deep in an underground bunker. His skin festering where the cables and iron tubes worm their way in and out of his reconstructed body, John O’Brien sits alone in the sickly green light, where only 2 mannequins with screens for heads keep him company.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	green room pale

The pill that passes what passes for lips is blue. John knows this just as surely as he knows that outside of this room, outside of this building, out, out, out and above this city and its civil unrest, there is a blue sky. Knows it as surely as he knows there is rust building up on the inside of his left elbow. Knows it as surely as he knows there is a little girl -- _young woman,_ he reminds himself, the thought sluggish. -- that is waking up every day, never knowing where her father went.

Knows it as surely as he knows his wife is dead.

The pill is blue, and it goes down hard, forces him to swallow, swallow again, and there’s a metallic tang on the back of his tongue that might be blood, or might be a wire losing its protective coating. He never can be quite sure, anymore.

The pill is blue, and it slows his thoughts to a crawl, slows his breathing, and the walls, he thinks, are perhaps white; but the lights in the room are dim and green, and everything is coated in their sickly light. _What,_ he wonders, a thread of thought not yet silenced by the chemicals working their way through what is left of the organic matter in his body, _is the purpose of green light?_

The walls are white, under the green. He decides this now, but not for the first time. As slow as his thoughts become, they do not cease altogether, and this room has been his home long enough for him to wind his sluggish considerations around every detail of it. The way the third light from his bed dims, flickers at every count of thirty-two, and flickers back to life before _thirty-three_ crosses his mind. A crack that runs approximately five feet high from the floor, spawning from a cracked tile four from the west-facing wall. _Did I do that?_ It’s a thought that comes unbidden, a thought that has his gaze coming to rest on his hands, all shining metal that gleams green and pale hands that have long-forgotten the steady kiss of sunlight.

One mechanical eye can better pierce the gloom than the other, and while it cannot ascertain whether or not he is, indeed, the one to have put the crack in the tile or the wall, it can make out the two silent shapes across from him with surprising clarity; one with daintily crossed ankles, one with politely folded hands.

It is not time for them to be awake. Not yet. It’s only been three minutes since he arrived, and they never wake until a full five minutes have passed. Not a moment more. Not a moment less.

These small matters of routine have become his life, and in them, he finds some measure of comfort. These -- companions of his had startled him, at first. Pale, long-limbed mannequins of indeterminate gender. Nameless. Voiceless. Still as the grave. Unnerving; that was how he had first found them, with their faux-flesh tinted green in the low light, leaned slightly against one another as if incapable of supporting their own weight. Screens where faces should have been, an empty darkness, reflecting only his own grief-stricken vision back at him.

John does not look at his reflection in their screens anymore. He does not know if he would recognize the man staring back if he did.

But no matter the horrors that have been inflicted upon him, no matter the mechanical monstrosity he has become, these still figures have never blanched at the sight of him; outside of this room, screams are all the greeting he gets, gunfire and misery, but here -- here, it is blessedly quiet.

The screens come to life simultaneously, but slowly, the bulb inside the sets taking time to warm up. On the right, wind passes through grey grass in a field he has never seen, and white clouds move slowly across a lighter grey sky. ( The sky _is_ still blue, somewhere. He knows this. He _believes_ this. He has to. ) On the left, a similar image plays, nearly in sync; but the picture is fractured, split by cracks in the glass of the screen.

That -- that he _knows_ is his fault.

In the early days, when he still had some fight in him, there were day when the anger boiled through him more sharply than the pain, more potent than any pills of any color could contain. Propaganda had been the name of the game, then; a man with a voice too cheery, eagerly describing the good of this program, the goals of the government. Poignant pleas for patriotism, for men to submit themselves.

_We’ll make you a new ma--_

His fist had connected with the screen before he’d had time to think better of it. Cracks had appeared, fracturing the smiling face of the announcer into an unrecognizable web of broken glass, and at least one of his fingers had followed suit.

Not that it mattered. He’d gotten an entirely new hand the next week.

A new man, indeed.

Seeing the peaceful seen before him marred by such violence, John feels a pang of something that can only be called _regret._

It’s a feeling he’s becoming better acquainted with the longer he spends in the company of this matched set. Such quiet, still, peaceful things; he sometimes wishes he, too, could fall into such a state of docile emptiness. Serenity in a moment, captured in the stillness of two figures seated upon a counter that ran the length of the room, unblemished skin, simple joints that never saw use, screens slightly tipped to rest one against the other, projecting angled views of places he has never, and will never see.

And sometimes, sometimes, a lullaby plays. He has long since stopped trying to guess whether the words were learned from him, or are some sick sort of coincidence.

Or, more alarmingly, if the sound is truly being played aloud or not.

Twin screens go blank simultaneously, and the light that flares to life above the door is red.

The pill that passes what passes for lips is red.

John knows this as surely as he knows what waits for him outside of this room. Knows it as surely as he knows that the anger that used to drive him has long since faded into a dull ache. Knows it as surely as he knows he left his daughter all alone.

Knows it as surely as he knows that his wife is dead.


End file.
